Hacker News Reader

Comment by ScottBurson | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's time for governments to start coming up with policies to attract technology businesses to small cities and perhaps even towns. These businesses would have to be comfortable having many remote workers, since there's no way they're going to get everyone they want to hire to move there, but maybe they could be given sufficient incentive to set up a headquarters there.

It's not unusual, of course, for localities to give large companies tax incentives to build factories, warehouses, or even data centers, but those tax incentives are very expensive, and they don't tend to bring better-educated, higher-earning workers into the area. Trying to attract a larger number of much smaller businesses might be a more fruitful approach in the long run, if a way can be found to do it.

View on HN

That won't work - there are really, really good reasons why clusters of industries emerge, and why they almost always emerge in dense areas.

A better move might be to pay people to leave dying counties. I've heard it discussed for Coal Country in West Virginia, and in parts of Kansas that have been shrinking for the last century.

As farms and rural industries mechanize, and as cities become the primary focus, why swim against the current?

There has been an effort to attract technology business to small cities and rural areas since the mid-1990s. I recall driving through West Virginia around 2000 and seeing a sign labeling a stretch of highway as "West Virginia's Tech Corridor." Knowing West Virginia, any company that built along there would have zero taxes, heck they probably wouldn't have to pay for the land.

Purely monetary incentives don't work. You have to look at the full range of what incentives people to move to a place. And companies are still run by people who are swayed by those same incentives.

Even in the Bay Area, companies with large campuses and competitive pay are opening offices in San Francisco because their talent is demanding it.

All true. I didn't say it would be easy. And I never suggested one could just pick a stretch of road and put it there — I think you have to have at least a small city.

I think there are strong headwinds to this, but there are some things that the government can do. For example, insuring that high-speed internet access is available in rural and small-town areas, similar to how they have in the past made sure that affordable postal delivery and phone service were not for big cities only. High-speed internet access makes it easier for certain kinds of jobs to be done from almost anywhere, and small towns tend to be more affordable.

Y’all are making the assumption rural areas want these things without asking

How about we include their own list of real needs (not just “More jobs” rhetoric) in the real debates rather than going in circles with hypotheticals on social media

Maybe the government can start there

Cause I grew up in a rural area. The aren’t luddites. But they also don’t want YOUR context pushed on their ways

Read some Paulo Freire

If you want people to come and spend money in your small towns, you're going to have to give them some reason to do that. If you don't want that, that's certainly your business, but with the consolidation of agriculture and the mechanization of manufacturing that have been going on the last several decades, it's not clear to me what else your local economies can be based on. And indeed, the depopulation of rural areas and small towns that this article is discussing suggests that a lot of local economies are having a very hard time.

If you have a better idea for a solution, by all means, tell us.

What "real needs" do you have in mind?

Apparently you missed the part about not bothering with hypotheticals on social media

I have the impression that you could contribute to this conversation if you would engage with it, but you seem to be interested only in taking pot shots at the rest of us. Do you want to make yourself understood, or do you just want to scare us off?

I grew up in a town of ~16,000 (it's ~14,000 now) that was the biggest town in its county. I have many friends who still live in small towns. High speed internet is definitely something they want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com